BWS2K wrote: »

Greetings!

I'm just curious what the best way to report bots is. I notice them all the time as I spend a significant portion of my hours running around Bal Foyen for materials, chests, or just as background while chatting on Discord. Is it considered Cheating (for the purposes of reporting you have a dropdown menu), and is there any organized effort against them or is it just tolerated as a thing some lazy folks will always find a way to do?

Thanks!
-BW

You can just interact with them and one of the options is a Report Player. Report them for Cheating. If you are on PC, get the addon mentioned above.

Honsetly, being able to report botting activity as a location ping, might be a good solution. Not possible right now, but it might be far more useable for moderation.

So there's been a handful running around Bal Foyen all day. I reported them early on. I just logged on to grab a video and had some weird experiences. Namely, I had two node-locked and my game timed out in about 8min. I logged back in, found another bot, node-locked him... and timed out just after 5min. My latency spiked off and on when they were around me but I don't have problems playing regularly. Actually... I don't recall ever timing out or losing connection like that (it was 3am, EST on the NA server, no storms or anything, rest of my 'net was fine the whole time). I typed in zChat a lot and didn't really get responses, which isn't super surprising considering the time but I know there were players on. It was just... weird.

So... can bots/owners mess with your connection?

BWS2K wrote: »

So there's been a handful running around Bal Foyen all day. I reported them early on. I just logged on to grab a video and had some weird experiences. Namely, I had two node-locked and my game timed out in about 8min. I logged back in, found another bot, node-locked him... and timed out just after 5min. My latency spiked off and on when they were around me but I don't have problems playing regularly. Actually... I don't recall ever timing out or losing connection like that (it was 3am, EST on the NA server, no storms or anything, rest of my 'net was fine the whole time). I typed in zChat a lot and didn't really get responses, which isn't super surprising considering the time but I know there were players on. It was just... weird.

So... can bots/owners mess with your connection?

I don't encourage people to play with their food. See them, report them, move on. Hands off.

I am not sure what "node lock" is, but it sounds like playing with the bots. We really don't want the operator to be hanging around fixing the bots because they get stuck by a player. That just means that they are there and can look like a player if ZOS queries them or messes with them. I have no idea how, or if, ZOS vets bots, but they have been rumored to use whispers and other tactics to determine if a player is there. If a player is there, harder to prove a bot.

Anyway, if you can "node lock" a bot, that could interfere with non-bots trying to access that node, That is reason enough to not do it.

Another reason is that I sometimes report players just standing at a node. Sometimes, they are a bot holding down the "gather" key or button. Sometimes, they are simply AFK. I suppose I can add "honey-potting" to that list.

But, lest you think I am just yelling at you here, I do want to mention that the Bal Foyen farming bots are harder to see than the bot trains that we see here on the forum. Kudos for seeing them for what they are.

So, thanks! I have been reporting them for a while now. There are (almost) always a minimum of 2 of them in Bal Foyen. Very rarely the same accounts on multiple days! I often feel like I am the only one finding and reporting this type of bot.

Now, about them impacting you. I would not expect that they can, but if they hit the server hard, like with a spam attack to gather that node, I suppose they could. That would be stupid, since ZOS can easily detect that.

About zone chat being quiet. Bal Foyen is a quiet zone. I go there to farm mats for that reason. The bots never say anything, and the new players passing through have little to say.

Rex-Umbra wrote: »

Has Zos ever acknowledged the problem?

Yes, but not recently.

Pick up paper and pen, write an open letter and throw it into the sea. That's your best chance to get noticed trust me.

ZOS does act.

The problem is that they act really slowly. And the botmakers just launch new accounts faster than ZOS bans them.

But ZOS does act. Even if that action is insufficient.

Drummerx04 wrote: »

BWS2K wrote: »

Wow. That's a fantastic add-on, thanks!

I'm glad you like it! It was my first ESO standalone Addon, and it drums up feelings of pride when it gets some critical praise. I've made a few more addons which you can see in my signature if you are curious. I try to aim for uniquely useful niche tools, because everyone and their cousin already has UI, inventory, buff trackers, etc all pretty well covered.

Keep up the good fight against the bots my friend!

Just to point it out - the TOS also prohibits page-scraping, which I think the add-on is capable of. I don't know about how it all works so I might be off-base, I just use it to capture the names so I don't have to wait for them to stand still and get them all. Bal Foyen and Kenarthi's Roost have the same bots as yesterday, though I've educated several folks on how to spot and report them.

BWS2K wrote: »

Drummerx04 wrote: »

BWS2K wrote: »

Wow. That's a fantastic add-on, thanks!

I'm glad you like it! It was my first ESO standalone Addon, and it drums up feelings of pride when it gets some critical praise. I've made a few more addons which you can see in my signature if you are curious. I try to aim for uniquely useful niche tools, because everyone and their cousin already has UI, inventory, buff trackers, etc all pretty well covered.

Keep up the good fight against the bots my friend!

Just to point it out - the TOS also prohibits page-scraping, which I think the add-on is capable of. I don't know about how it all works so I might be off-base, I just use it to capture the names so I don't have to wait for them to stand still and get them all. Bal Foyen and Kenarthi's Roost have the same bots as yesterday, though I've educated several folks on how to spot and report them.

Ah, I see your concern. The Bot Scanner actually just requests all the information put into the ticket from queries made directly with the Addon API. Specifically all information included is available about an entity that you target with your reticle. I just save that information and bind it to the list so I can put it in the report automatically. So you are free to use the report generator as well (shift+left click on a name in the list)

BWS2K wrote: »

Gotchya. I don't understand that sort of stuff yet, so I didn't know. Thanks!

No problem! It's always good to air on the side of caution, and some Addons can look like black magic, but all of them fall strictly within the limitations of the queries and commands that ZOS specifically opens up to developers.

When ZOS encounters something that either the community or ZOS itself has major issues with, ZOS will modify the calls we can physically make with our addons. So using any Addon always falls within the TOS (for better or worse lol)

We have issues like this on PS4 NA, too. There are duplicate sorcerers near Deathclaw's lair in Bleakrock that automatically XP farm the wolves, and weird squatters by all the nodes along the shorelines. I keep reporting them, and they disappear for a day or two, then reappear.

(edited to be more specific about console/server)

lordrichter wrote: »

Drummerx04 wrote: »

BWS2K wrote: »

Wow. That's a fantastic add-on, thanks!

I'm glad you like it! It was my first ESO standalone Addon, and it drums up feelings of pride when it gets some critical praise. I've made a few more addons which you can see in my signature if you are curious. I try to aim for uniquely useful niche tools, because everyone and their cousin already has UI, inventory, buff trackers, etc all pretty well covered.

Keep up the good fight against the bots my friend!

While you are here... do you know if anyone uses that feature in the addon to socialize bot locations? I ask because I have never seen it in chat.

@lordrichter I'm pretty sure no one uses it. When I put it in, I kind of underestimated the collective apathy of the player base towards reporting bots, and it seems like most people are okay just reporting what they see and then moving on with their day.

The feature was just sort of an experiment that fell sort of flat when I figured out you couldn't actually put custom links in chat, so I didn't flesh it out completely and it's fairly limited in scope.

I'd certainly love for one of them to weigh in on this, at any rate. I had a rather lengthy discussion with a fairly rude individual in Bleakrock earlier, the basis of which was the useless nature of reporting bots. I'm amazed at how upset some folks get about it but I won't make any accusations. I will, however, post this edited snippets from conversation here from a person who seemed to know a bit about botting:

I'm not looking for drama but latency is an issue for a lot of people and I feel like hundreds of automated scripts might be part of that? Or, at the very least, it's against TOS. If there's a better place for this discussion, or if it's already been had elsewhere, please forgive me - and gimme dat link, yo.

lordrichter wrote: »

For me, the main reason is that they are violating the ToS and CHEATING. Until ZOS comes out and says that it is OK, justification for reporting them needs to go no further than that.

Word.

BWS2K wrote: »

Sorry for the double-post.

I just logged back in and ran a circuit of Bal Foyen - not only did I not see any (obvious) bots, but I saw none of the half dozen that had been on all weekend. I can't take credit for anything, we all worked together to report, but that's encouraging. Either they've left for now before getting banned, the reporting worked, or they've adapted new appearances to avoid detection. We shall see...

This might be my new life's pursuit.

That's great
Well whatever happened, bots are still very common in all servers.
I suggested to ZOS to implement auto ban system of bots, active game masters to patrol the servers and other steps.
Hopefully, ZOS will take serious steps to remove the bots from Nirn